My rifle is my duty
by EmbersSpark
Summary: Simple ideas and head cannons that I've taken to the character of SGT Calhoun. T for language
1. Chapter 1

She remembers the day they were plugged in, not that hard since it was only a week ago. But still, you go through the mission as many times as a new game gets quarters put in.

The aspect of game design was her military training, where she was given her code and polished up to what they wanted her to be. Everyday something was added and or taken away. She was taught new attacks and guards, commands, and the layout of the tower that would end up being her bad guy. Then one day she got her voice, finally being able to speak was amazing, all it had taken was an audio file and she felt whole. At least for twelve hours. The day after was the day they merged her back story into her code, the most tragic back story that could be programmed apparently. She had seen the storyboard of it on the wall but hadn't expected it to been so intense, apparently in the same merge that had granted her emotions. Tamora refused to be broken. Refused.

Everything shut down after that, pixels taking the form of the code as they were dissolved for what she could only imagine would be transport.

Then they were plugged in. The mission going smoothly just like it had in the design center, becon lighting up and the threat dissolving as they turned their backs on another day and headed out to where ever their interests were. Some went to Game Central Station, other to Tapper's, but Tamora, she stayed behind. Training to get better, stronger, anything to try and take the pain away. Her back story was given to any single player that got to a check point far enough to learn about it. At least two times a day, sometimes more, she would fall into a flashback one moment and be ripped back to the present in the next by a close call with a damn parasite.

Then the ham handed idot and the fix it guy blew through and tore out. Making her life hell for one evening she really didnt want to go through again...Until they parted ways. It was like a virus had seeped into her and just sat in the back of her mind, craving and wanting what she didnt know how to give.

She did anything to get the event out of her mind. Trained harder, the recruits learned that it was best to leave once she set foot in the high tech gym before the sand bags and anything else she could get her hands on sailed across the room. She's fixed more than one broken mirror on the wall.

A craving appeared for social interaction, some need to actually speak to people for some reason for hell. It got so bad that her soldiers seemed to look twice when she spoke a simply greeting. She was losing her touch, her force, her command.

But she forges on, shedding blood, but never tears. Med packs are gathered and they are healed before going off in their separate ways. Then the next day they wake up and they go through it again. Day after day, just like the game requires and the code demands.


	2. Memories

Whether it was her coding or not. She had memories. Painful, confusing, dark and code rattling memories that she tried to wrap her head around sometimes, usually on the brink of consciousness as she was waking up or falling asleep. It was odd what she could actually take notice of.

She remembers running around the shuttle she grew up in as a child, even further back was the fuzzy feeling of soft green grass between her toes and the smell of fragrant flowers drifting along with a cool breeze that tinted the summer heat.

Faces flash sometimes, her father's more so than any others. She remembers him teaching her pretty much anything he knew about combat, being a marine down on the surface wold had given him some skills the current troops couldn't even wrap their heads around. She could remember her mom scolding her for playing with an unloaded gun one afternoon, asking why she wasn't playing dolls or coloring, her response could was simple in her own mind. "I don't have time for dolls, I need to get better so I can be like daddy!" Her mother had shaken her head and went in search of her father. She could hear them fighting later that night.

Her training continued whenever her dad was on the ship, her blue eyes and short blonde hair being a familiar sight in the training rooms, it always brother a smile to her face when she thought of all the masculine soldiers melting around her and carrying her here and there on her shoulders. Her father deployed four time, and came back three. Days after her tenth birthday she was woken by the sound of a stifled sob and the tell tale wooshing of the front door opening. She crept out of bed, eyes widening as she took in the sight of the two soldiers, her dad's friends holding a pair of dog tags and folded flag. She knew enough to know what had happened. Her father was dead.

As soon as they were handed over the dog tags took their forever home around her neck, a place they wouldn't leave for a moment, and a place they still haven't left. She trained while her mother grieved, passing the nearly stand still time until the funeral. The funeral wasn't a formal thing, the body placed in an unmarked cardboard box before it was moved into the cremator, reducing her father to ashes as she sobbed against her mother's waist. Her father's friends and training partners from the gym staying to pass their condonlenses with hugs and words of apologies.

She never took a day off from training, finishing school two years early and hitting the gym with the new free time. On her eighteenth birthday she signed the contract enlisting her into the space marines, despite her mother's protests and wishes for any other fate of her daughter. Training began the day after for her, taking place at a lockdown wing of the space craft, cutting them off of family and friends for the three months it would take to train the new recruits into soldiers.

She was the first woman to join the program, a fact most of the recruits used against her as bait until she had her boot on the back of their heads and was making them lick the cement floor of the combatives room. Unlike them she knew how to hold her tongue around the instructors, watching with a straight face and a sense of silence as they received a multitude of bruises and bone breaks before they learned the same lesson she already knew.

After that she was given a wide berth, many of them learning it was better to keep their distance unless you wanted a trip to the med bay. Three months, a broken wrist and a few ribs, multiple bruises and her on set of dog tags joining her father she was standing at the front of the formation, leading at the top of her class.

Her squad was one of the first responders to the shit storm that was the cy-bug incident. It was her first deployment, the voyage taking a little over twenty four hours to reach the small planet that had been the site of research. They had been attempting to find a means to make the entire planet into essentially a new earth, a habitiual home of sorts, no more living on a cold metal ship in the emptiness of space. Tamora could have told them it wasn't going to work.

The planet where they touched down was a barren and rocky wasteland, the only man made thing being the glass and metal tower rising out of the ground and nearly up into the heavens. Blood was spattered on the entrance door, a bloodied handprint smearing its way across the brushed metal to the point where the door closed. Her helmet picked up no threats on the other side of the door and she carded it open, thankfull for the optional air filters as the metallic smell of blood and decay drifted out into the dry atmosphere. She counted over a dozen bodies off the bat, bodies draped across the floor with their limps bent at un natural angles. Blood had dried in dark smears across the walls, a clear sign of struggle that ultimately led them nowhere.

A quick hand signal and they were moving again, guns trained as they went level by level, shooting anything that moved as they tried to annoying the soldiers who moved to the rear to vomit. They made it to the scene of the lab what had to be hours later, carnage being a light way to describe it. Gore of red and neon green lines every surface where any bodies that were left were missing limps or more than just flesh. It was then that she received her first injury. Amongst the horror they had missed a bug until it had knocked her onto her stomach, helmet jarring off of her skull and rolling to the floor as it sank its claws and fang into her neck, ripping the flesh in jagged tears of a vicious animal. The bio mechanical beast was shot off of her back, flying to the opposite wall as she scrambled up, head swimming as the blood seeped down her back. A cloth was wrapped around her neck, soaking up the blood as more enimes made themselves known with screeches, attacking in a massive swarm as shots fired off at everything with an ounce of green. One of her men attempted to escape, but made it to no avail, meeting only the jaws of a beast as he was devoured before the squad's eyes.

They watched helplessly as the monster grew and shifted, taking on the facial features of the soldiers last scream as it let out an ear piercing shriek. It dove at them, decimating the ranks with bloody attacks until there was only a handful left, firing shots until the monster crumpled to the ground, fluid leaking out onto the floor and over their boots.

The order of retreat was given, Tamora holding up the rear as they ran to the craft carrier, loading in and heaving breaths as she flew them back to the shuttle, cutting off the manual controls for auto pilot as they joined her men in the back. Everyone was shaking, eyes wild as the med kit was passed around, injuries treated before it was hung back up. It was obvious that the wound on her neck would scar as she examined it in the mirror. A shiver ran down her back as the feeling of cool metal on her back imprinted into her memory for what would have to be an eternity. The dull clink drew her attention down to her breast, her hand moving to hold up the dog tags as she gazed at them. Her father's words echoed in her mind. "There will never be anyone stronger than what you think of yourself." Her body stiffened as she stood again, moving wordlessly to the pilot's seat as they flew back home. Nobody slept, or spoke until they returned, the receiving team ushering them into the med bay and psych areas of treatment. The questions flowed as she expected and she answered as easily as she could, stepping out at long last and returning to the small apartment that she had always called home. Her mother was up, drinking tea in the kitchen, that of which she nearly spilled as she caught sight of her daughter.

They exchanged simple greetings and few tears were shed before she settled down into the couch, tired eyes refusing to close after such a long event. She left out telling her mom any of what they saw, her decision only strengthened as one of the doctors rang on her communicator, stating her fears. Her sanity had been the only one to survive the attack, the few remaining of the team had volunteered and checked them into the psych ward for futher evaluation. It was true then. She was the only true survivor of the first response of the cy-bug attack.


End file.
